cloud computing - All posts tagged cloud computing

Oracle Corp.
is expected to make a further push into cloud computing next week when its Oracle OpenWorld user conference takes over downtown San Francisco.

Executive Chairman Larry Ellison is scheduled to give the Sunday evening keynote at Moscone Center, where he usually takes questions from customers after discussing Oracle\’s products and bashing the competition. Ellison recently stepped down from the CEO job.

After taking heat for missing Oracle Corp.’s last earnings call to watch the America’s Cup race, Chief Executive Larry Ellison was on hand to lead the tech giant’s report Wednesday.

And it was a much more upbeat report, compared to the last one, with Oracle beating estimates, sending its stock rallying 5% Thursday.

That quickly prompted speculation that, after a bumpy year, Oracle may be mounting a comeback, perhaps similar to Ellison’s Team Oracle USA’s dramatic come-from-behind victory against New Zealand last summer on San Francisco Bay.

In fact, Ellison himself suggested that after his Team Oracle USA sailed to victory on the water, Oracle, the tech behemoth, can win in a different, some say tougher terrain: the cloud.

Oracle Team USA was a loss away from a humiliating America’s Cup rout last week when they staged a dramatic comeback by winning four straight races against the Emirates Team New Zealand.

New Zealand still leads 8-5, needing only one more win to reclaim the America’s Cup.

But Team USA’s comeback victories at least helped Oracle Corp. kick off its Open World conference in San Francisco on an upbeat note.

The team and the company had a rough week before that.

Chief Executive Larry Ellison took some flak for skipping the tech giant’s earnings call last week to go to the race. Oracle shares took a hit after the company missed revenue expectations for a third time in a row, and the Redwood City, Calif-based behemoth put out a disappointing forecast.

On Monday, Oracle President Mark Hurd was so pumped up, he began the second day of the conference by leading conference participants in cheering for Oracle Team USA. He then pivoted to what he said were Oracle’s gains in the big trend in IT.

Workday Inc. will report quarterly results on Wednesday, its first report since going public last month.

Expectations are generally upbeat on Wall Street. Workday’s
stock has risen 5% this month, and has jumped about 6% since Workday’s Oct. 12 debut when it opened at $48.05. The shares soared 74% when it went public with an offer price of $28.

The stock was last trading down 3% to $50.20. Workday is scheduled to report after the closing bell. Analysts expect Workday to report a third-quarter a loss of 49 cents a share, on revenue of $64.05 million, according to a consensus survey by FactSet. Total revenue for the same period last year was $36.5 million, according to the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Shares of Cisco were up 1% Monday morning as the deal got upbeat reviews from some analysts who say the acquisition makes sense. That’s mainly because Meraki, which is based in San Francisco, would give Cisco a stronger position in the cloud networking gear market for small and medium-sized businesses.

The buzz over cloud computing has pushed stocks in that business past reasonable valuations, particularly Medidata Solutions, which is overpriced even after badly missing third-quarter expectations, a situation that has Charles Rotblut, editor of AAII Journal, tagging the stock as his “Sell of the Week.”

Appearing on MoneyLife With Chuck Jaffe, Rotblut said Medidata
“whiffed on earnings expectations,” reporting earnings of 24 cents per share when analysts expected 31 cents. With a price-to-earnings ratio of 31 and a price-to-book ratio of 8.6 and revenues rising 21%, Rotblut said there is no denying that the company is going strongly, but noted that the growth rate is already priced into the shares.

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